Book picks similar to
Nanjing: The Burning City by Ethan Young
graphic-novels
graphic-novel
comics
historical-fiction
Marzi
Marzena Sowa - 2008
My father works at a factory, my mother at a dairy. Social problems are at their height. Empty stores are our daily bread.I’m scared of spiders and the world of adults doesn’t seem like a walk in the park.”Told from a young girl’s perspective, Marzena Sowa’s memoir of a childhood shaped by politics feels remarkably fresh and immediate. Structured as a series of vignettes that build on one another, MARZI is a compelling and powerful coming-of-age story that portrays the harsh realities of life behind the Iron Curtain while maintaining the everyday wonders and curiosity of childhood. With open and engaging art by Sylvain Savoia, MARZI is a moving and resonant story of an ordinary girl in turbulent, changing times.
Green River Killer: A True Detective Story
Jeff Jensen - 2011
After twenty years, when the killer was finally captured with the help of DNA technology, Jensen and fellow detectives spent 188 days interviewing Gary Ridgway in an effort to learn his most closely held secrets--an epic confrontation with evil that proved as disturbing and surreal as can be imagined. Written by Jensen's own son, acclaimed entertainment journalist Jeff Jensen, Green River Killer: A True Detective Story is bound to become a well-recognized member of the crime-genre graphic novel family, including titles like Darwyn Cooke’s The Hunter and Alan Moore’s From Hell.
Feynman
Jim Ottaviani - 2011
. . Nobel winner . . . bestselling author . . . safe-cracker. In this substantial graphic novel biography, First Second presents the larger-than-life exploits of Nobel-winning quantum physicist, adventurer, musician, world-class raconteur, and one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century: Richard Feynman. Written by nonfiction comics mainstay Jim Ottaviani and brilliantly illustrated by First Second author Leland Myrick, Feynman tells the story of the great man's life from his childhood in Long Island to his work on the Manhattan Project and the Challenger disaster. Ottaviani tackles the bad with the good, leaving the reader delighted by Feynman's exuberant life and staggered at the loss humanity suffered with his death. Anyone who ever wanted to know more about Richard P. Feynman, quantum electrodynamics, the fine art of the bongo drums, the outrageously obscure nation of Tuva, or the development and popularization of the field of physics in the United States need look no further than this rich and joyful work.• One of School Library Journal's Best Adult Books 4 Teens titles of 2011 • One of Horn Book's Best Nonfiction Books of 2011
Deogratias, a Tale of Rwanda
Jean-Philippe Stassen - 2000
He is an ordinary teenager, in love with a girl named B�nigne, but Deogratias is a Hutu and B�nigne is a Tutsi who dies in the genocide, and Deogratias himself plays a part in her death. As the story circles around but never depicts the terror and brutality of an entire country descending into violence, we watch Deogratias in his pursuit of B�nigne, and we see his grief and descent into madness following her death, as he comes to believe he is a dog.Told with great artistry and intelligence, this book offers a window into a dark chapter of recent human history and exposes the West's role in the tragedy. Stassen's interweaving of the aftermath of the genocide and the events leading up to it heightens the impact of the horror, giving powerful expression to the unspeakable, indescribable experience of ordinary Hutus caught up in the violence. Difficult, beautiful, honest, and heartbreaking, this is a major work by a masterful artist.
Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution
Julia Alekseyeva - 2017
She taught herself to read, and supported her extended family working as a secretary for the notorious NKVD (which became the KGB) and later as a lieutenant for the Red Army. Her family, including 4-year-old Yulia, moved to the U.S. in the wake of Chernobyl and forged a new life.
Soviet Daughter
united two generations of strong, independent women against a sweeping backdrop of the history of the USSR. Like Sarah Glidden in
How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less
, or Marjane Satrapi in
Persepolis
, Alekseyeva deftly combines compelling stories of women finding their way in the world with an examination o the ties we all have with out families, ethnicities, and the still-fresh traumas of the 20th century.
A Bag of Marbles
Kris - 2013
This is the day that will change their lives forever. With the German occupation threatening their family's safety, the boys' parents decide Maurice and Joseph must disguise themselves and flee to their older brothers in the free zone. Surviving the long journey will take every scrap of ingenuity and courage they can muster. If they hope to elude the Nazis, they must never, under any circumstances, admit to being Jewish.The boys travel by train, ferry, and on foot, facing threats from strangers and receiving help from unexpected quarters. Along the way they must adapt to the unfamiliar world beyond their city and find a way to be true to themselves even as they conceal their identities.
The Boxer: The True Story of Holocaust Survivor Harry Haft
Reinhard Kleist - 2011
Sixteen-year-old Harry Haft is sent to Auschwitz. When he is forced to fight against other inmates for the amusement of the SS officers, Haft shows extraordinary strength and courage, and a determination to survive. As the Soviet Army advances in April 1945, he makes a daring escape from the Nazis. After negotiating the turmoil of postwar Poland, Haft immigrates to the United States and establishes himself as a professional prizefighter, remaining undefeated until he faces heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano in 1949. In The Boxer, Reinhard Kleist reveals another side to the steely Harry Haft: a man struggling to escape the memories of the fiancée he left behind in Poland. This is a powerful and moving graphic novel about love and the will to survive.
Ethel and Ernest
Raymond Briggs - 1998
They meet during the Depression -- she working as a chambermaid, he as a milkman -- and we follow them as they encounter, and cope with, World War II, the advent of radio and t.v., telephones and cars, the atomic bomb, the moon landing. Briggs's portrayal of his parents as they succeed, or fail, in coming to terms with their rapidly shifting world is irresistably engaging -- full of sympathy and affection, yet clear-eyed and unsentimental.The book's strip-cartoon format is deceptively simple; it possesses a wealth of detail and an emotional depth that are remarkable in such a short volume. Briggs's marvelous illustrations and succinct, true-to-life dialogue create a real sense of time and place, of what it was like to experience such enormous changes. Almost as much a social history as it is a personal account, Ethel & Ernest is a moving tribute to ordinary people living in an extraordinary time.
Monet: Itinerant of Light
Salva Rubio - 2017
From the Salon des Refuses (“Salon of the Rejected”) and many struggling years without recognition, money, and yet a family to raise, all the way to great success, critically and financially, Monet pursued insistently one vision: catching the light in painting, refusing to compromise on this ethereal pursuit. It cost him dearly but he was a beacon for his contemporaries. We discover in this comics biography how he came to this vision as well as his turbulent life pursuing it.
The Kite Runner: Graphic Novel
Khaled Hosseini - 2011
Now, in this beautifully illustrated graphic novel adaptation, Hosseini brings his compelling story to a new generation of readers.
Little White Duck: A Childhood in China
Na Liu - 2012
Da Qin—Big Piano—and her younger sister, Xiao Qin—Little Piano—live in the city of Wuhan with their parents. For decades, China's government had kept the country separated from the rest of the world. When their country's leader, Chairman Mao, dies, new opportunities begin to emerge. Da Qin and Xiao Qin soon learn that their childhood will be much different than the upbringing their parents experienced.
Vietnamerica: A Family's Journey
G.B. Tran - 2011
Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past—and to focus on their children’s future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind. In this family saga played out in the shadow of history, GB uncovers the root of his father’s remoteness and why his mother had remained in an often fractious marriage; why his grandfather had abandoned his own family to fight for the Viet Cong; why his grandmother had had an affair with a French soldier. GB learns that his parents had taken harrowing flight from Saigon during the final hours of the war not because they thought America was better but because they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. They entered America—a foreign land they couldn’t even imagine—where family connections dissolved and shared history was lost within a span of a single generation.In telling his family’s story, GB finds his own place in this saga of hardship and heroism. Vietnamerica is a visually stunning portrait of survival, escape, and reinvention—and of the gift of the American immigrants’ dream, passed on to their children. Vietnamerica is an unforgettable story of family revelation and reconnection—and a new graphic-memoir classic.
Deadly Class, Volume 1: Reagan Youth
Rick Remender - 2014
Marcus Lopez hates school. His grades suck. The jocks are hassling his friends. He can’t focus in class. But the jocks are the children of Joseph Stalin’s top assassin, the teachers are members of an ancient league of assassins, the class he's failing is “Dismemberment 101,” and his crush has a double-digit body count. Welcome to the most brutal high school on earth, where the world’s top crime families send the next generation of assassins to be trained. Murder is an art. Killing is a craft. At Kings Dominion School for the Deadly Arts, the dagger in your back isn’t always metaphorical. Collecting the first arc of the most critically acclaimed new series of 2014, by writer RICK REMENDER (BLACK SCIENCE, Fear Agent) and rising star artist WESLEY CRAIG (Batman). Experience the 1980s underground through the eyes of the world’s most damaged and dangerous teenagers.Collects DEADLY CLASS #1-6.
X-Men: Magneto Testament
Greg Pak - 2009
But in 1935, he was just another schoolboy - who happened to be Jewish in Nazi Germany. The definitive origin story of one of Marvel's greatest icons begins with a silver chain and a crush on a girl - and quickly turns into a harrowing struggle for survival against the inexorable machinery of Hitler's Final Solution From X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong writer Greg Pak and award-winning artist Carmine Di Giandomenico. Collects X-Men: Magneto Testament #1-5.
Super Spy
Matt Kindt - 2007
Each story follows the life of a spy during World War II. Spanning the globe from Spain to France and Germany, this book takes the reader on a tour of the everyday life of the spy. From the small lies and deceptions to the larger secrets that everyone hides, Super Spy reveals the nature of espionage and how an individual can be lost and also find redemption. A children's book is something more than it seems... a woman swims the English Channel to deliver a deadly secret... a German spy desperately seeks escape for herself and her daughter... and a spy continues to serve his country even beyond death.